FIGS. 1-3 illustrate a known photonic-based distributed switch 10 that employs a single passive photonic broadcast star 12 and a plurality of independent ports 14 connected to the star. FIGS. 2 and 3 show one of the ports 14 of the switch 10 as including an external interface channel 16 for interfacing to external host devices 18, a processor such as a field programmable gate array (FPGA) 20 connected to the interface channel 16 for processing optical data frames and determining which data frames to forward/receive to/from the external channel, a fixed wavelength optical transmitter 22 that outputs an optical signal containing data frames received over the interface channel 16 to the star 12 on one wavelength, and a multi-wavelength optical receiver 24 that receives multiplexed optical data streams from the star 12 and demultiplexes the received data streams.
In this known switch, the broadcast star is a single point of failure such that if the star 12 fails, the entire switch goes down.